The January 18, 2016 edition of Los Angeles Angels news includes Baseball America’s top 10 Angels prospects for 2016, a close call for Mike Trout in the Internet Baseball Awards vote, plus some stuff we missed last week when I was sick…
The Story: Baseball America’s Angels Top 10 Prospects for 2016
MWAH Says: The first major publication to put Taylor Ward in the top spot within the organization. Interpret that how you will. Only real surprise in the top 10 is young right-hander Jaime Barria, who made neither our or MLB dot com’s top 30. He didn’t get a mention by BP either.
The Story: Trout misses AL Player of Year award because of internet trolls
MWAH Says: The thing about holding any sort of vote or poll or survey on the Internet is that multiple someones will inevitably mess with the data by giving silly answers. Mike Trout missed out on his fourth consecutive Internet Baseball Award for the AL’s best player by a mere .2%, thanks to 15 ballots that didn’t include him at all and a few others that put him behind players like C.C. Sabathia and Trayce Thompson. For all the grief the BBWAA gets, at least the Hall of Fame isn’t beholden to the whims of the Internet.
The Story: Q&A on the Angels farm system
MWAH Says: BA’s Bill Mitchell answers questions about the many fringe guys who missed this year’s top 10, among other things. Lots of “this guy could turn into something, but it’s too early to tell.”
The Story: Angels hiring a Quantitative Information Analyst intern
MWAH Says: If you have a background in SQL databases, R, etc. and want to break into baseball, apply at the link above. You will be reporting to a literal rocket scientist.
The Story: David Freese should have taken deal with Angels
MWAH Says: This is the opinion of the LA Times’ Bill Shaikin, and it’s one that seems unfair to me. It’s not as though Freese is the only guy who’s seemingly stuck on the open market. Teams are just way more hesitant to pull the trigger on position players this winter for whatever reason. I mean, Ian Freakin’ Kennedy and his should-have-been-crippling qualifying offer managed to sign before Yoenis Cespedes, Justin Upton, Howie Kendrick, Ian Desmond, and Dexter Fowler, let alone Freese.
The Story: Garrett Richards, Kole Calhoun exchange arbitration figures with Angels
MWAH Says: Not at all surprising or worrying that two of the team’s best players didn’t settle their 2016 salaries before Friday’s annual deadline. Richards will end up earning between $5.3-$7.1 million in his second year of salary arbitration, while Calhoun will get between $2.35-$3.9 million in his first. The only question now is whether the team tries to buy out multiple years in order to maybe save a few bucks and have more cost certainty heading into 2017.
The Story: Fernando Salas, Angels avoid arbitration with $2.4 million deal
MWAH Says: If you’re a big believer in defense-independent pitching metrics like FIP, you love that Salas is coming back on half Joe Smith’s salary. If you’re not, you’re not. Salas had a sparkling 3.15 FIP in 2015 thanks to a career high in K rate (27.5%) and career low in BB rate (4.5%), but still finished the year with a 4.24 ERA and pariah status among fans.
The Story: Halos sign Al Alburquerque to one-year deal
MWAH Says: Al Alburquerque is like Carlos Marmol without the elite peak. He’s a hard-throwing right-hander with seemingly no idea what his slider is going to do other than miss the hitter’s bat. His strikeout rate has fallen from more or less the moment he reached the big leagues, but he did throw a career-high 62 innings last year, so there’s that. What he adds to the Angels bullpen is an arm that can touch the high 90s that isn’t Cam Bedrosian.
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